Policies that expand school choice aim to empower parents by giving them the opportunity to choose the school that best fits their child. Publicly funded school choice has increased considerably in recent years, helped by a variety of initiatives, including public charter schools, transfer options for students under the No Child Left Behind Act…

School performance frameworks (SPFs) are action-oriented information tools that provide information on school performance and quality across a variety of measures. SPFs have evolved as a solution for local communities to make sense of an array of student, school, and system performance data, and to support transparent and equitable decisions. SPFs…

Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane have gathered a diverse group of scholars to examine the shifting federal role in education across the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. While the administrations were vastly different, one thing remained constant: an ongoing and significant expansion of the federal role in…

The promise of quality education is a cornerstone of American culture. Why, then, is this not the experience of every child in our nation? In the 1990s, the charter school movement began under the auspices of an avenue to address the disillusionment of education policy, the sense of powerlessness felt by parents and teachers, and the disparities…

The article discusses how instead of being parts of a concerted educational reform effort, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the development of charter schools are in fact contradictory initiatives. Basing itself on a theoretical framework that brings together issues inherent to outcome-based school reform and arguments supporting and criticizing…

Standards and accountability policies are central elements of school reform agendas aimed at equalizing students' access to quality education and closing the achievement gap. Yet, such policies have failed to yield the expected, large scale results. One explanation may be found in the embedded zones of wishful thinking. Two particular zones of…

This article presents the author's views about the school district deconstruction in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He discusses his 30-year experience as a principal and central office administrator with the School District of Philadelphia and his involvement in the efforts to lead urban school reform in the country. He also describes the reform…

An institutional analysis is presented of the policy, political, and legislative events associated with the failure of an attempt in 2006 by the state of Maryland to take control of 11 schools in Baltimore City and turn them over to independent managers or into charter schools under No Child Left Behind. The place of the failed…

Congress plans to kick-start the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) this week with the first in a series of hearings in a key House committee, where members pledge a "bipartisan, open, and transparent" process in rewriting the version of the law enacted under President George W. Bush. The finish line…

It might be tempting for education administrators, saddled with an accumulation of budget cuts and dwindling resources, to keep their heads down and concern themselves with only the immediate future as they try to overcome a host of obstacles and provide a high-quality education to students. But schools and universities have to pay attention not…

Student mobility is the phenomenon of students in grades K-12 changing schools for reasons other than customary promotion from elementary school to middle school or from middle school to high school. This non-promotional school change can occur during the school year or in the summer between school years. It may involve residential change, school…

Across the nation, the final stage of school restructuring is being reached by an inexorably increasing number of schools. Under the No Child Left Behind law, if a school does not make its adequate yearly progress targets after four previous years of being "in need of improvement," it must implement a fundamental restructuring plan. The…

Exploring the critical role of school choice in the future of education reform, the Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is an interactive web application that scores large school districts based on thirteen categories of policy and practice relevant to choice. The intent of the ECCI is to: create public awareness of the differences among…

As the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation chronicled in its last year's Fordham Sponsorship Accountability Report, "Seeking Quality in the Face of Adversity", the 2008-09 school year was a brutal one during which schools, and their peers, faced many existential threats. The 2009-10 school year was Fordham's fifth year as a charter school…

The 2010 elections were good for Republicans in Ohio, who have traditionally supported the expansion of charter schools (and choice broadly). The authors were hopeful as lawmakers and the governor set about removing caps on charter schools, lifting the e-school moratorium, and suggesting other legislative changes that would improve charter quality…